Out-migration and land-use change in agricultural frontiers: insights from Altamira settlement project

Abstract

One of Daniel Hogan’s lasting impacts on international demography community comes through his advocacy for studying bidirectional relationships between environment and demography, particularly migration. We build on his holistic approach to mobility and examine dynamic changes in land use and migration among small farm families in Altamira, Pará, Brazil. We find that prior area in either pasture or perennials promotes out-migration of adult children, but that out-migration is not directly associated with land-use change. In contrast to early formulations of household life cycle models that argued that aging parents would decrease productive land use as children left the farm, we find no effect of out-migration of adult children on land-use change. Instead, remittances facilitate increases in area in perennials, a slower to pay off investment that requires scarce capital, but in pasture. While remittances are rare, they appear to permit sound investments in the rural milieu and thus to slow rural exodus and the potential consolidation of land into large holdings. We would do well to promote the conditions that allow them to be sent and to be used productively to keep families on the land to avoid the specter of extensive deforestation for pasture followed by land consolidation.

Drivers of Households’ Land-Use Decisions: A Critical Review of Micro-Level Studies in Tropical Regions

“…For example, using data on 132 households from Uruara county in eastern Brazil, Caldas et al [72] find that households with some capital (measured as durable goods available to the household upon arrival on the property) deforest between 20-30 hectares more of forest than poorer households without any capital (the mean farm size in the study is 23 hectares). In addition, access to capital is also found to be associated with the adoption of longer term and higher yielding activities such as the cultivation of perennial cash crops and adoption of pasture in a number of studies [63,73,74]. Kaminski and Thomas [48] investigate the impact of institutional reforms within the cotton sector on households' land uses in Burkina Faso, Africa.…”

Ciclos de vida de la propiedad y del hogar, mercados y cambios en el uso y la cobertura de la tierra en la Amazonia Brasileña

“…La expansión de los mercados regionales urbanos también representa una oportunidad de mitigación del riesgo, en la medida en que estos crean alternativas para que los agricultores hagan frente a la escasez de mano de obra o crédito (VanWey, Hull y . En algunos estudios se argumenta que la emigración, especialmente la migración temporal y a corto plazo de algunos miembros de la familia, puede funcionar como una opción de subsistencia en el hogar de origen cuando la mano de obra familiar excede la mano de obra necesaria para la gestión agrícola (Robson y Nayak, 2010;VanWey, Guedes y D'Antona, 2012). Las asociaciones locales y los sindicatos también son fundamentales para ayudar a los agricultores a superar obstáculos mediante la provisión de crédito subsidiado, información técnica, semillas y herramientas (Coomes, 1996;Helfand, 2001).…”

Composição demográfica domiciliar e dinâmica do uso do solo em Machadinho d’Oeste, Rondônia: evidências baseadas nos estágios iniciais da fronteira

“…O padrão recorrente para diferentes áreas de estudo, no entanto, parece sugerir uma mistura de comportamento de coorte e efeitos potenciais de land turnover sobre a dinâmica da paisagem local (VANWEY et al, 2012b).…”